Poster B50, Tuesday, August 20, 2019, 3:15 – 5:00 pm, Restaurant Hall
Prior knowledge predicts early consolidation in learning a novel language
Dafna Ben-Zion1, Micha Nevat1, Anat Prior1, Tali Bitan1;1University of Haifa
Language learning occurs in multiple phases. Whereas some improvement is already evident during training, offline consolidation processes that take place after the end of training play an important role in learning of linguistic information (Davis & Gaskell, 2009). Studies on individual differences in second language learning showed that linguistic abilities in L1 predict the attained proficiency in L2 (Melby‐Lervåg & Lervåg, 2011), but these studies do not typically differentiate between online and offline processes. The timing of offline consolidation is thought to depend on the type of task (Tamminen et al., Cog. Psych. 2015), with the consolidation of generalizable implicit knowledge, or integration with existing knowledge, suggested to require more time and sleep. The current study aims to investigate individual differences in the timing of consolidation following learning of morphological inflections in a novel language. Eighteen adults learned to make plural inflections in an artificial language, where inflection was based on morpho-phonological regularities. Participants were trained in the evening, and consolidation was measured after two intervals: 12 hrs (one night) and 36 hrs. (two nights) post training. We measured both inflection of trained items, which may rely on item-specific learning, and generalization to untrained items, that requires extraction of morpho-phonological regularities. The results for both trained and un-trained items showed two patterns of consolidation: while some participants improved during the first night, others, who deteriorated in performance during the first night, improved in the later consolidation interval. However, there was no correspondence between consolidation patterns of trained and un-trained items. Importantly, only early consolidation gains for trained items were correlated with phonological awareness in L1, measured prior to training. Our results suggest that consolidation timing depends on the interaction between task characteristics and individual abilities. Importantly the results show that prior meta-linguistic knowledge predicts the quality of early consolidation processes. These results are consistent with studies in rodents (Tse et al., Science 2007) and humans (Hennies et al., JNS 2016) showing that prior knowledge accelerates consolidation of newly learnt episodic memories. Because the rate of consolidation processes can determine the accumulation of knowledge across separate exposures to the language, we suggest that these individual differences in prior linguistic knowledge and in the timing of consolidation can explain some of the variability found in the attained level of second language proficiency.
Themes: Multilingualism, Morphology
Method: Behavioral